Friday, February 08, 2013

Right next to City
Café, Murfreesboro’s iconic dinner, is the office of the Republican Party. I
was walking by the GOP HQ the other day, passing a couple of older men standing
outside the office reading the You’re a
Republican if… poster, and talking about Makers, Takers, and Ayn Rand. As I
walked by I said, “Who is John Galt?” This is the secret password of Randians.
If you don’t recognize it read Rand’s Atlas
Shrugged.

“Which are you,” the
shorter of the two men asked, “a Maker or a Taker?”

“A Maker,” I said,
explaining that I made content for books, magazines, and websites. “And you?” I
asked.

“Were Makers,
too,” the taller man said. “We build Nissans.”

“And yet I bet all
three of us are also Takers: tax breaks, Veteran’s benefits (the shorter man
wore a Vietnam Vet hat), and when we’re eligible Social Security and Medicare
as well. So who are the real Takers?”

“People who just
sit around and do nothing except collect checks.”

“Like the CEO of
Nissan? He probably has no clue how to make a car. Or people who just make
money off of money: what do they really make? The real Takers are people who
get huge salaries, tax havens, and golden parachutes without producing a damn
thing. After all, what did Mitt Romney actually Make?”

“Sounds like you're a so…”

“I love Atlas Shrugged,” I interrupted so as to
avoid being called a Socialist. “And I think we Makers ought to shrug just like
in the book. How long do you think the real Takers would last if the real
Makers stopped making their food, clothes, homes, and cars, or stopped cleaning
their houses, picking up their trash, teaching their kids, trucking their
goods, stocking their shelves, delivering their mail, cable, water, and
electricity? If the real Makers shrugged maybe then we would value work rather
than wealth in this country, and pay people for making rather than taking.”

I expected an
argument, but both men just burst out laughing. I laughed with them. It was
never going to happen. The real Takers have won by convincing the real Makers
that they should win. What else can you do but laugh, even when the jokes on
us?